DRUG LAW REFORM NOT DEAD, BUT NOT QUITE ALIVE

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Proponents of easing state mandatory sentencing laws for
drug offenders accused prosecutors Tuesday of halting momentum toward
reform by raising eleventh-hour objections.

"This is a tactic they have used every year to thwart any meaningful
changes in the law," said Deborah Small of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Another proponent of softening the statute, former state Sen. John Dunne,
said the complaints of the state's district attorneys about a drug reform
plan from the state Assembly was "inflammatory and self-serving."

Aides said the Legislature and Gov. George Pataki's office were still
talking about changing the drug laws to soften the harshest penalty and
create more opportunities for treatment for nonviolent offenders. They said
the issue was not dead.

But Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said "I really don't detect an interest
in the ... Senate in doing anything meaningful."

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said the negotiations on the issue had
"slowed to a crawl."

The drug law bill favored by majority Democrats in the Assembly was
approved by that chamber late Monday by a 79-62 margin _ or with only three
votes to spare.

That narrow margin calls into question the Assembly's ability to pass a
compromise plan with the Senate and Pataki, if one can be reached,
according to Bruno spokesman John McArdle.

Advocates for changing the laws said a 13-page analysis released by
prosecutors Friday of competing reform plans put forward by Pataki and the
majority Democrats in the Assembly had thrown cold water on the negotiations.

In it, the prosecutors assailed the Assembly plan as being too lenient to
drug offenders and of potential danger to the public because some violent
offenders would allegedly be diverted to treatment instead of prison. The
prosecutors also said they must retain a significant voice in the decision
of which offenders go to prison and which are sent to treatment.

Another proponent of drug law reform, Jonathan Gradess of the state
Defenders Association, called the timing and nature of the prosecutors'
complaints a "thermal nuclear strike" intended to kill reform in 2002.

Small said prosecutors have used their substantial power for nearly 30
years to fill state prisons with black and Hispanic drug offenders as a
consequence.

"I believe they have abrogated their right to continue to say" who gets
prison and who gets treatment, Small said.

Meanwhile Tuesday, the New York City-based Human Rights Watch said its
study of the drug laws called the children of those incarcerated under them
the "collateral casualties of the state's war on drugs."

It said 23,537 children have parents in New York prisons convicted of drug
laws and since 1980, 124,496 children have had at least one parent
incarcerated in New York prisons on drug convictions.

Also Tuesday, the Republican candidate for attorney general, former Judge
Dora Irizarry, tried to make drug law reform an issue in her campaign
against incumbent Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

"Considering the enormous crime-fighting impact of this reform, it strikes
me as odd that our chief crime-fighter would go into hibernation on this
issue," Irizarry said.

Spitzer has been a "strong proponent of Rockefeller drug law reform and he
has worked with all sides to try to build a consensus for the appropriate
legislation," his spokesman Darren Dopp said Tuesday.